The two-time defending champion on Thursday night suffered a crushing ninth-inning loss to the — their chief competitors in their efforts to pull off the elusive three-peat. Once again, struggling Dodgers closer is a topic of conversation.
The Dodgers went into the bottom of the ninth with a 4-2 lead, but Díaz surrendered four straight singles with one out and allowed the Brewers to tie the game. At that point, manager Dave Roberts lifted Díaz for , who permitted the go-ahead run on another single. The Brewers preserved that lead for a stunning win.
The loss was potentially a significant one because the Dodgers, who have lost nine of their last 13, are jostling with the Brewers and for the top two seeds in the National League bracket. Those top two seeds get a bye to the Division Series, while the division winner with the worst record must play a Wild Card Series. The stakes, then, are quite high, and the Dodgers going into Friday’s slate are two games behind the Brewers for best record in — and home-field advantage throughout the postseason — and just a half-game ahead of the Braves and, thus, at risk of falling out of the top two.
As for Díaz, it’s been a miserable first season with the Dodgers after he signed a three-year, $69 million free agent pact this past winter.
Earlier this season, the 32-year-old Díaz was out more than three months after undergoing elbow surgery. Since he’s returned from the injured list, he’s got a 12.71 ERA with three blown saves in seven appearances.
Overall, opposing batters have a slash line of .375/.462/.643 this season, which means Díaz in 2026 has basically turned every opposing hitter into ” on a heater.”
This year’s output, of course, is in stark contrast to Díaz’s work in 2025, when, as a pending free agent, he authored a 1.63 ERA in 62 appearances as the ‘ closer. It’s also out of step with the rest of his career, as Díaz, a three-time All-Star with two finishes in the top 10 of the Cy Young vote, had a lifetime ERA+ of 144 coming into 2026. This season, Díaz has lost a full tick of velocity off his fastball, and he hasn’t commanded it well. Compared to 2025, he’s located far too many fastballs over the heart of the plate, whereas last season he was at the top of the zone most of the time. As well, his whiff rates on his fastball and slider have cratered.
Even so, Roberts appears to be sticking with him, which may be less an endorsement of Díaz than it is a reflection of the troubled and, in recent days, overworked state of the rest of the Dodger bullpen.
“Give me another option,” Roberts told reporters, including , when asked if Díaz would continue getting save opportunities. “I can’t just say, ‘Change (Díaz) to low leverage.’ I have to have other options, and to be quite honest, none of those guys really have thrown the baseball great. That’s just kind of the way it is.”
“I’ve just got to see what they want to do,” Díaz said of the possibility of losing his closer job, via the AP. “I want to do the best thing for the team. At the end of the day, if they give me the ball in the ninth, I will try to do my job. If they give me the ball in another inning, I will try to do my job. Got to get better, be consistent.”
Roberts does have right-hander in his bullpen, and he has closing experience — including picking up 16 saves while Díaz was on the IL. Shifting Scott to closer, though, would create the need for a high-leverage setup arm to fill Scott’s current role. What the Dodgers need is an effective, or at least pitchable, Díaz.
Right now, Díaz is running a batting average on balls in play of .514, and that stratospheric figure will almost certainly not persist (most MLB pitchers settle in with a BABIP of .290 to .300 over the long haul). Even with some correction ahead, though, that doesn’t mean Díaz will be a fitting closer for a team with the ultimate goal of winning the World Series for a third straight year. They’ll also need Díaz to improve upon what right now is a career-worst strikeout rate and almost a career-worst walk rate.
A crushing and perhaps crucial loss to the Brewers on Thursday night was an acute reminder of all of that.
